To understand precisely where the UK is going under Boris Johnson's current leadership it is worthwhile considering yesterday's events in Northern Ireland. As the BBC has reported:
DUP minister Edwin Poots has ordered his officials to halt Irish Sea border checks from midnight.
He had been threatening to act, as part of the DUP's ongoing opposition to the Northern Ireland Protocol.
Mr Poots said he had taken legal advice which meant he could direct the checks to stop in the absence of executive approval for them.
Sinn Féin, the DUP's power-sharing partners, criticised the move as a "stunt".
Aside from staff from the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (Daera), which Mr Poots oversees, border posts also employ local authority environmental health staff.
It remains unclear what they will do in light of Mr Poots' order, although pre-Brexit checks on livestock are expected to continue.
I suspect that many people in the UK are unaware that new checks on goods moving between Great Britain and Northern Ireland were introduced in January this year, entirely as a consequence of the agreement reached by Boris Johnson with the EU. This was the next stage in the upgrading of the border between Great Britain and Northern Ireland necessary to protect the integrity of Ireland as an individual country for customs purposes as is required to support the Good Friday Agreement and the peace that it has delivered.
Edwin Poots is claiming to have legal advice that he has acted lawfully in making this direction because the new arrangements have not been endorsed by the Stormont Executive, which is divided on the issue. He also claims that this is a devolved issue on which he can make direction.
I began to sense that there was a conspiracy in play when Brandon Lewis, the Northern Ireland secretary, made the comments on the Peston programme on ITV noted in this tweet:
To see the video you will need to go to the tweet as it will not embed here.
Lewis made it seem as if this is an unfortunate event over which he has no control in the comments that he made. He also noted that by chance the actions did, however, happen to support his arguments with the EU. The claims are false. The UK is the contracting party with the EU on this issue under the terms of the Northern Ireland Protocol and Section 26 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998 says:
In other words, anything that Edwin Poots says can be overridden by Brandon Lewis. On this occasion Brandon Lewis is bound to take this action by the terms of the Northern Ireland Protocol, which says:
Brandon Lewis was, then, either ignorant of the obligations imposed upon him by law when making the comment that he did on television last night, or was deliberately ignoring them. Neither is encouraging, but if the latter is the case, as I suspect, then this is deeply worrying.
My concern is that what is happening here is that the government is encouraging the DUP to take this action and is claiming that it can do nothing to intervene even though, as I show, it has a legal duty to do so. As we now know, ministers can maintain a falsehood for a very long time in this government. They might try to do this in this case.
So, why might they be doing this? I have three suggestions.
Firstly, Boris Johnson wants to inflame the EU negotiations on the Northern Ireland Protocol and prevent them from succeeding by the end of this month, which is the deadline that they have set.
Second, Johnson wants to inflame far-right nationalist opinion around this issue and will do so quite deliberately, whatever the consequence.
Third, Johnson wants a conflict to distract attention from his own plight and is quite indifferent to the consequences for the island of Ireland if he happens to provoke it there.
It is apparent that, like all tyrants, Boris Johnson is indifferent to the rule of law and anything that approximates to protocols governing behaviour. The possibility that conflict in Northern Ireland is being provoked to suit his purposes would appear to be high. This is a profoundly worrying situation with enormous consequences, not least for Ireland itself, because if the UK refuses to put these controls in place then borders have to move either onto the island, or between Ireland and the EU, and both are utterly unacceptable.
We know that Johnson is completely dedicated to maintaining his premiership. What is becoming apparent is the price that we might pay for its continuation might be very high indeed.
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As the DUP thrashes around to stay relevant it will even cling on to Johnson (again). Have they learnt nothing?
NI peace was been a rare instance of cross-party agreement since the Major years; to cynically politicise it for personal purposes is, perhaps, Johnson at his worst (although it is quite a tough field).
It is rumoured that the First Minister (DUP) will resign today, which automatically takes away the office of the Deputy (SF) and paralyses the Executive. But apparently they could continue like this for months without the UK government intervening. Coming immediately after Poots’s announcement yesterday, this smells like a stitch-up. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-60241608
How does this play with voters in NI? Are there enough that will support the DUP’s shenanigans, or will they push back against them playing political games when it has real consequences?
And how will the EU (and indeed the US) react to this flagrant breach of the Protocol? (Meanwhile Putin must be laughing at the prospect of the UK and the EU taking lumps out of each other.)
Smells, looks like and sounds like a stitch-up
The rule about ducks would seem to apply
The DUP have never really supported the Good Friday agreementand will do anything to wreck it but just hope that Sin Fein, and other ‘loyalist’ and alliance parties and the Irish government and EU play it cool – and dont give the DUP further excuses . Let them and the British govt thrash around in their own contradictions. I think business in NI is doing OK inside both the EU single market and the UK
Usually I would be confident. But we have an out-of-control tyrant in charge of the UK government, and that means that nothing can be taken for granted
So……..here we go………..hopefully this will the last straw for the more decent minded Tories. But if not….
I was watching the film ‘Kingdom of God’ the other day and I heard some inspiring ideas in the dialogue:
‘What man is a man if he does not make the world better’. How’s that for a challenge? What do you think Boris? Rishi? Jacob?
And the description of the world as a ‘Kingdom of conscience’ – based not on religion but on God’s word (whatever your God is). Not a Muslim world, or Jewish world or Christian world. OUR world. I’d like to have a go at living in such a kingdom.
Faced with these evil imbeciles we have in power, I thought these lines in this imperfect film were like nectar to the ears.
Andy Beckett in the Guardian touches on one of my minor preoccupations – that somehow the way our system works even their catastrophies often helps the Conservatives to cement their long term dominance .
Am convinced that 85% of political air time over the last couple of years has been Conservatives spouting for or against Johnson. They provide their own opposition. Ministers, ex ministers, sacked ministers loyal back benchers – disloyal backbenchers, this group, that group, ERG,, CRG, select committe members etc. All much more important than anything Labour has to say.
As Beckett suggests, even non Tories know more about the arcane procedures of the 1922 committee, or the men in grey suits than they do about Labour policies.
He suggests that as in one party states it becomes difficult for people to envisage anything other than the corrupt system we have under the dominant party.
BBC plays a huge part in this – its charter needs to change to give its mission to ‘educate and inform’ – some real meaning in a polarised political context.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/04/tories-trouble-scandal-strengthen-british-politics